Paulo Cecchetto, ‘From Within’, Juliet Gallery, Trieste, Italy, exhibition catalogue, 1998

(Andrew Bick, Nicholas Bolton, Don Brown, Douglas Gordon, Claude Heath, Oswaldo Macia, Anna Mossman, Jane Simpson, Michael Stubbs)

In Michael Stubbs’ work the progressive construction of the image is substituted by a faster and less controlled process, and the restrained movement of (Andrew) Bick’s hand is replaced by a gesture through which Stubbs continues his search across the strongholds of abstraction.

Characterised by irony, this search has brought him through a long series of experiments with the traditional motif of the grid to the recent works, made by pouring rich and creamy layers of varnish on a board laid flat on the studio floor.  More related to Pollock’s “dripping” than to Stubbs’ previous “conststructivist” interest, such works are, however, purged of the obsessive and neurotic technique of the American master in favour of a slower composition of the image.  Sensuality and eroticism are preferred to heroism, and, in tune with the present time, there is no trace of personal or collective catharsis.  All is apparently condensed on the rich, opulent surface, as the artist plays at magnifying painting’s traditional appeal through an exaggerated stimulation of the senses.  However, despite this flattering of the viewer through such sensuous overabundance, the work’s interest lies elsewhere, in its questioning absorption, in being the instrument in a process of research that intentionally leaves plenty of room for chance - the fascinating and rationally inexplicable synchronicity between the artist’s hand and his unspoken intention.